Review Process

Photo by John B. McRae

In 2021, I was invited to join a new artist social club on Market Street called Ars Longa, Vita Brevis. Art is long, life is short. A motto with gravitas.

There was a $1,000 commitment deposit.

The building was under renovation. The club would open soon. There were to be salons, conversations, cross-pollinations. A sanctuary for culture in a city that badly needed one.

Covid had already hit the year before, in 2020. The arts community was reeling — studios closing, exhibitions canceled, artists scrabbling. It felt like precisely the kind of moment when a place whose tag was “here for the artists” might become active. For my own part, I started teaching free art classes — which I still do. Just because artists needed somewhere to gather, even if that somewhere was on Zoom.

Instead, the updates began.

Still permitting.
Permitting delays.
Permitting in progress.

For years.

Occasionally, the club surfaced for small events.

There was a Bastille Day housewarming in 2021. Guests entered through a “speakeasy” in the alley behind the building, walking past an encampment of unhoused San Franciscans, then ascending in the elevator into a champagne reception where wealthy patrons admired Picassos and discussed culture. It was a remarkable piece of architectural storytelling: scarcity at ground level, abundance one floor up.

The permitting, we were told, continued.

There were studio tours. An evening with Preservation Hall. A sense of something almost happening.

Meanwhile, I completed a master’s degree in cultural leadership through the Royal Academy and Maastricht University. I toured international art fairs and interviewed museum directors, collectors, and artists. This week I returned from the Middle East, where literal princesses are building art institutions with sovereign clarity and urgency. After that, the San Francisco Fog Fair felt less like a global node and more like a well-funded regional hobby.

Throughout all of this, the emails continued.

Permitting updates.
Soon.

On February 13, 2026, five years after my deposit, I received a text: “Please call regarding your application.”

My application had been reviewed and was not approved.

The reason: I “have not been active recently.”

I was offered a refund of my $1,000. The club was very busy preparing for its grand opening that evening and unfortunately could not host me.

The house rule, I am told, is simple: “No assholes.”

Institutions, like friendships, rely on interpretation.

Art is long. Life is short. Permitting, however, appears immortal.